Reviews: Bobet, Leah

An Inheritance of Ashes —
Leah Bobet

Leah
Bobet’s 2015 An
Inheritance of Ashes is
her second novel. The first was 2012’s1Above.

The
war against the Wicked God is over; the dread lord and its army of
Twisted Things were defeated by a single knife thrust from John
Balsam’s blade. How exactly Balsam killed a god by stabbing it is
unclear. Balsam vanished in the chaos that followed the Wicked God’s
death and no one else knows what happened.

Indeed,
all too few of the men who marched south from the lakelands to fight
the Wicked God have returned. Young Hallie and pregnant Marthe wait
for Marthe’s husband Thom to return, while doing their best to keep
Roadstead Farm functioning. Shell-shocked veterans trickle north, but
none of them are Thom. One wandering veteran, Heron, stays, trading
his labour for room and board over the winter. Still, even with his
help, the sisters may not be able to keep the farm … for reasons to
be explained later.

But
the appearance of a Twisted Thing at a window hints that the war
might not be as over as people think.